There was that time when he told her the only way he could get his big head in a football helmet was to slather grease all over his hair. The way he described it, she could picture him straining to pull the helmet on. She laughed and laughed.

Xavier was somewhat of a jokester.

“He made people laugh,” Brandis said.

Xavier could draw Daffy Duck and other Disney characters in such hilarious detail in his special drawing pad.

Xavier would pull the pad out and show Brandis, who was two years older. He drew elaborate drawings of super heroes of his own invention with bulging muscles.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.